Chapter Twenty-Five

The next night, and probably a couple of hours prior to daylight, a pinging sound came from the front of Echo’s cage.

He feigned sleep.

The person tapping a small rock against the metal was someone new. Someone he’d never seen before and he waited, watching through his lashes when the kid, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, if that, stood indecisive.

“Hey,” the kid whispered.

“He’s sleeping, Cash,” the bossy twin said.

“I don’t care. I heard he’s one of the originals.”

“Yeah?” The twin’s tone changed to hopeful.

Echo stayed still. He’d heard from Solomon that he, Rogue, and Fisher were the original three, but he didn’t know it was a thing.

“Yeah, they’re legends.”

If you only knew, kid.

“Yeah, that’s what I heard too. I want to see how he got caught,” Cash said.

“He wasn’t caught. He was locked up,” pretty boy twin said, his soft voice rough from sleep.

“I wonder what he did to piss Solomon off?” Cash said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Echo murmured, and the young man jumped, dropped the stone, and stumbled away from the cage. Echo rolled to sit up and then stood. Walking to the bars, he gripped them and studied the guy. He may have been young, but Cash looked sturdy, like he was getting enough to eat. Rogue’s doing? Echo wondered.

“Why aren’t you locked up?” Echo asked.

“I’m twenty-one now.”

Echo knew what that meant. Instead of being taken from the cage and told to kill and then locked back up, Cash had reached the age where all Solomon had to do was tell the young man to point and shoot.

“Why haven’t you gotten your own place?”

“I don’t have the money.” Cash hung his head.

Ah, that was right, boys this young couldn’t work for Erebus. He had blanked out a lot of his youth, but some things had stuck. Like having to stick around until he had the skills to become a paid assassin plus have Solomon trust him enough to pay him. When Solomon started working for Dave, they still had to wait. Even after Dave’s interview, Echo still had to wait until Solomon said he could work for Erebus.

“It’ll be another year or two before he’ll pay you,” Echo told Cash.

“But at least I’m not locked up,” Cash whispered. Echo saw it all on the boy’s face—the pain, anger, the fear.

“What are your names?” Echo asked the twins. If they spoke to him at all, they would give him their assassin names, but it was better than bossy and pretty boy. The pair were standing and holding onto their cell bars. Apparently, he’d lost his scariness and they felt bold enough to get up from their constant huddle.

I’m Apollo,” the bossy twin said and with a jerk of his chin toward the pretty twin, “and this is Azrael,”

“Are those your real names?” Echo asked just to confirm.

“No,” Azrael said.

Apollo glanced up to where the ceiling met the wall and Echo knew what the twin was looking at. The camera hung pointed at the cages. If anything, Solomon was thorough. Although at this time of the night, Echo would bet money—and if Solomon stayed true to form—that the fucker would be fast asleep and nowhere near this warehouse.

“What about you, is Cash your real name?” Echo asked the kid who had lost some of his fear and moved closer to his cage.

Cash shook his head.

“And you’ve been here a year. How long have you been killing?” Echo asked the twins.

“A couple of months,” Apollo said.

“And you’ve been killing for a few years now?” Echo asked Cash, who nodded.

“Cash, can you open the door and let me out?”

The kid sputtered—yes, at twenty-one to his thirty, Cash was still a kid. Eyes wide, Cash vehemently shook his head.

“I can’t do that.”

“Come on, I’m not going anywhere. I’m one of the originals. And I do need to use the washroom,” Echo coaxed.

“I don’t have the key,” Cash whispered.

“But you know where it is, don’t you?”

Cash swallowed hard, gazing at him through a fall of hair, his eyes filled with fear.

“Please, Cash. If you get me, Apollo, and Azrael out of here, I have a place you can all crash. You can get a legitimate job and the twins can go back to high school.”

Cash darted his eyes between him and the twins. And Echo saw it—the fear, but also the curiosity as the kid wondered if he was telling the truth or not.

“Cash…” Apollo whispered, and the pair stared at each other through the bars.

Was that a spark of something? Echo thought yes and played on it.

“Cash, get us out of here and you, Apollo, and Azrael can be together.”

After another moment, Cash didn’t agree to help them. Paralyzed by fear of Solomon did that to a person. Solomon had done the same fucking thing to him and was still doing it to Rogue and probably Fisher.

“I’ll be back,” Cash whispered and hurried from the cage area.

“All we can do now is hope he does the right thing,” Echo told the twins. Tears stood in Apollo’s eyes when he finally turned from Cash’s disappearing back.

“I’ve asked him before,” Azrael said with a sad shake of his head. “He won’t do it.”

“He didn’t do it before because we didn’t have help. He might,” Apollo whispered. “He might do it this time. Will you keep your word?”

“On my life,” Echo promised, gripping the bars so hard his hands hurt.

Hours passed and he really had to take a piss, so he used the bucket in his cell with his back turned to the kids. Shaking it off, he zipped up and glanced over to the boys’ cage.

“Do either of you know where this place is located?”

They shook their heads. So that meant although they had killed, it had been a controlled kill guided by Solomon. Or had Rogue moved up in rank?

“I hear a train whistle in the distance sometimes,” Apollo said, and then jolted to his feet when Cash reappeared and walked toward the cages.

With a huge bunch of keys clutched in his hand, Cash walked right over and handed them over through the bars.

Shit. This was going to take a while, plus the other cage. Echo tossed a glance at the narrow windows that ran along the top of the building.

Daylight was less than an hour away.

And that meant Rogue would be coming back.

Echo launched into action, trying one key after another, not giving a fuck that he was noisy as all hell. Cash anxiously waited, shifting back and forth on his feet and tossing glances over his shoulder. The twins were gripping their bars as if their lives depended on it.

Finally, Echo found the key that opened the cell door. Hurrying to the twins’ cage, he started jamming keys into the lock.

“Hurry, hurry,” Cash begged. “Rogue shows up before daylight sometimes.”

Fuck. And Rogue would probably come early because he was there.

“When I get them free, you stay on my ass. All of you. Stop when I stop and run when I run, you got that?” Echo shoved another key in the lock and it turned.

Panting, he jerked the door open and spun toward the wall of the warehouse. Even though there were sheets of heavy plastic hanging from poles as makeshift partitions and stacks of shit everywhere, he took them away from the open space and to the wall. It would be there along the shadows that they had a better chance of escape.

Remaining unseen was as easy as breathing for him, but being that stealthy with three kids in tow would be tough.

A door banged somewhere North of their position and Echo pulled them all into a huddle at the far wall. They wouldn’t be seen here in the dark, and here they were far beyond the light streaming over the cages. There was junk stacked here and plenty of places to hide.

“Stay quiet. Your lives depend on it,” he whispered. “Use those assassin skills and hide your eyes.”

All three boys immediately sank back and melted into the blackness as if they were one entity.

Rogue entered the warehouse, knocking heavy plastic out of his way. He took one look at the empty cages and cursed.

“God damn you, Echo!” Rogue yelled and Echo felt Cash jerk slightly and then still.

Echo held his breath.